No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for the 'Politics – National' Category

July 24, 2009

Franking censorship

by @ 13:24. Filed under Health Care Reform, Politics - National.

(H/T – Jazz Shaw)

Propagandists the world over have learned that controlling the language of the debate is essential to controlling the outcome of the debate. Traditionally, members of Congress have been allowed to use whatever verbiage they choose in official communications with their consitutents. However, a pair of decisions from the Franking Commission, which oversees said communications, has sent a chilling effect into the debate:

  • First, they prevented Republican members from including the following chart produced by the Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee that shows the 31 new federal programs, agencies, commissions and mandates that are part of the House health care “reform” plan:


    (Click for the full-sized version)

  • Now, they told Rep. John Carter (R-TX) that the phrases “government-run health care” and “House Democrats” can no longer be used in official mailings or recordings for telephone town-halls, with the only allowable description of the plan being “public option health care plan” and the only allowable description of the House Democrats “House majority”.

Jazz points out that, while Republicans ran the House, he received official mailings from his Congressman that used the phrase, “The Invasion and Occupation of Iraq,” with no attempt by the Republicans to stop the use of that. I can imagine the outrage had the Republicans decided that the only allowable verbiage was the official “Operation Iraqi Freedom”.

What’s next? The Franking Commission, or another entity, telling candidates what they can and cannot say?

Red-on-red health care opposition

by @ 12:58. Filed under Health Care Reform, Politics - National.

My friends at the American Issues Project are spotlighting the House Democrats who have come out against ObamaCare. So far, they’ve got:

  • Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA), who realizes that tax increases on small businesses won’t help those small businesses to offer health care they can’t afford to offer now.
  • Rep. Mike Arcuri (D-NY), who wants more time to get his constituents involved.
  • Rep. John Boccieri (D-OH) who recognizes that his constituents don’t like a government-run plan, especially one that includes a tax increase.

They’ll continue to feature Democrats who see that light of ObamaCare as an onrushing train rather than the end of the tunnel.

Eau de Cadillac

by @ 11:30. Tags:
Filed under Business, Politics - National.

The editorial writers at Investor’s Business Daily slice and dice the first significant post-bankruptcy move by Government Motors – “Cadillac, the new fragrance for men”. That’s right – if you can’t afford a new car, at least you can smell like one (or more likely, just plain smell).

Seriously, there are two GMs – the one that saw a 22% drop in sales for the first 6 months in the US, and the one that saw serious growth nearly everywhere else on the globe. GM sales in China grew by 38%, and sales in several Latin American countries set records. I do discount the market-share growth in Europe, as GM has shed or is about to shed its two major European brands, Opel and Saab.

The money quote from IBD – “We hope GM can survive in the U.S. But we rather doubt it can with a management that thinks that perfume will cover up the stink of political meddling and the lingering bad odor of its ruinous retirement and health care costs.”

Those who loathe victory and country…

by @ 11:09. Filed under Politics - National.

Warner Todd Huston has a tour de force on Barack Obama’s assertation that “victory” isn’t his goal in Afghanistan:

It is telling that when Barack Obama pictures “victory” he doesn’t see in his head that famous photo of the U.S. Sailor kissing the pretty girl in Times Square on Victory Day. Instead, what is immediately conjured up in Obama’s mind is the bedraggled figure of a beaten Japanese Emperor groveling at the feet of U.S. military might.

Obama’s sympathy is with the Emperor that governed a nation that tried to viciously take over the entire Pacific Rim and enslave many millions of Asian peoples. Obama’s first thought when the word “victory” is broached is of our enemy, his sympathies with them, not us. In fact, he seemed to even find disdain for our own military hero that took that surrender.

But that isn’t even the worst of it. Once again we see another example of Obama’s ignorance of history, even American history. In fact, Emperor Hirohito didn’t even sign the document that finalized the surrender of Japan to General MacArthur. That duty was performed by Japan’s Foreign Minister, Shigemitsu, and one of its generals, Umezu.

In fact, we didn’t destroy Japan’s Emperor and allowed him to continue on in a ceremonial role to allow the Japanese to feel as if they hadn’t been entirely crushed and that some of their traditions might live on.

This is doubly-disturbing, because Michael Yon reports that the Japanese, who have been one of America’s closest allies since the end of World War II, have been doing some of the heaviest reconstructive lifting in Afghanistan.

If those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, what is in store for those who loathe it and country?

Oh Noooooooo!

siren_animatedThe clay-mation President has some problems.  Drudge is reporting that today’s Rasmussen approval rating will show President Obama under 50% approval.  Notably, this is the first poll taken since Obama had his prime time presser trying to sell his health plan.

I think we have a problem Houston!

Revisions/extensions (8:39 am 7/24/2009 – steveegg) – And the news is all negative for The Won. 51% of those in the three-day rolling-average Presidential Tracking Poll disapprove of Obama’s job performance, with 49% approving. The Presidential Approval Index (those strongly approving less those strongly disapproving) is at -8. Independents only give Obama a 37% approval.

Rasmussen further notes that 2/3rds of the results are from before the Epic FAIL of a press conference on Wednesday. I can’t wait until Sunday, when we get a fully-post-presser view.

Post-partisan starting to lose bipartisan support

by @ 6:00. Filed under Politics - National.

(H/T – Sammy)

Fox News released their latest Opinion Dynamics poll, and there’s some rather interesting numbers buried within it:

  • Despite independents still giving President Obama a positive job approval rating (54% approve/36% disapprove, with the overall at 54% approve/38% disapprove) and a positive personal favorable rating (64% favorable/28% unfavorable), they don’t like the way he’s gone about health care reform (38% approve/41% disapprove) or the economy (46% approve/46% disapprove).
  • The Democrat-led Congress barely has a plurality of Democrats approving of their job performance (47% approve/42% disapprove), with 66% of independents and 76% of Republicans disapproving.
  • Independents don’t have a favorable view of either party, with the Democratic Party earning a 44% unfavorable (for a plurality) and the Republican Party earning a 55% unfavorable.
  • No group thinks Congress has a clear plan for fixing the economy, with 58% of Democrats, 80% of independents, and 86% of Republicans saying no.
  • Over 90% of each of the three groups believes that Congress should read the bills they consider, even if they’re thousands of pages long.
  • Vast majorities of each of the three groups (76% of Democrats, 83% of independents, and 87% of Republicans) want Congress and the President to be in the same government-run health-insurance plan that may be passed as everybody else.

That tracks with a Rasmussen poll Shoebox found that found 69% of Republicans and 58% of independents believe Obama is governing in a partisan rather than a bipartisan manner. The odd thing is that 36% of Democrats agree.

Revisions/extensions (8:59 am 7/24/2009) – I should know better than to write late at night; had to correct a rather embarrassing typographical error in the last paragraph.

July 23, 2009

Hot Read Thursday – Emperor Misha I’s “Taking the Fisk to King Hussein”

by @ 7:22. Filed under Politics - National.

Emperor Misha I had way too much fun fisking Obama’s press conf…er, pre-packaged propaganda piece. Let’s see if I can offer up a tasty, yet safe-for-work treat for you (editor’s note; since this theme doesn’t do double-blockquotes all that well, I put the second blockquote in regular quotes):

“where we’ve watched our graduation rates lag behind too much of the world,”

So you’re going to endorse school vouchers, disband the public school system and shut down the teachers’ unions? Great!

“and where we spend much more on health care than any other nation, but aren’t any healthier for it.”

…which explains why everybody is coming to America to get care when their socialist utopias can’t provide them with it. The sick foreigners want to get sicker, that’s it.

If you manage to get here before you go to work, if you get here after you get home from work, or if your boss doesn’t care about the artful use of the F-bomb on company computers, go read the entire thing. I guarantee you, it’s That. Fucking. Good.

July 22, 2009

Tom Petri thinks you drink and crap too much, and don’t stink enough

(H/T – Van Helsing)

Tom Petri is an original co-sponsor to an abomination of an act called the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act of 2009, authored by Earl Blumenauer (D, or is that Moonbat-Oregon). According to the short summary provided by Blumenauer, the various local units of government can’t come up with $534 billion in “needed” drinking water/wastewater infrastructure improvements over the next 20 years without raising taxes incredibly on the locals. So, what’s Blumenauer’s and Petri’s solution? Raise $534 billion in federal taxes over 20 years (or $26.7 billion per year) on those same locals! The dirty details:

  • A 4-cent-a-bottle tax on water-based beverages because, as the summary says, they “rely on drinking water as their major input and result in both increased flows and increased waste in our waters.” Surprisingly, alcoholic beverages, the number one cause of public urination, are not included in this tax. Beverages made from concentrate also escape the tax man.
  • A 3% excise tax on toilet paper, soap, detergent, toothpaste, perfume, sunblock, shaving cream, hairspray, water softener, and cooking oil because they all end up in the water. That’s right, cooking oil is on the list despite every homeowner knowing that simply dumping the oil down the drain only clogs it. Guess Petri hates fish frys.

    Oh, and don’t think you can make your own soap and escape the tax man like “Big Alcohol” and “Big Juice”. They’ll tax you on the estimated retail value of your homemade soap.

  • A 0.5% excise tax on pharmaceutical products because people are too stupid to not throw their pills in the toilet and because Big Pharma is an easy target, but mostly because Big Pharma is an easy target.
  • A 0.15% tax on corporate profits over $4 million because they use water too and because it’s just soooo unfair that the Superfund tax sunsetted, but mostly because the Superfund tax sunsetted.

Is there nobody in east-central Wisconsin that will challenge Petri?

“You’re Going To Destroy My Presidency”

(H/T – JammieWearingFool, from whom I shamelessly stole the headline)

An article in NationalJournal.com’s CongressDaily perfectly illustrates why Shoebox put up “Obama worship” as one of the categories:

“Let’s just lay everything on the table,” (Sen. Chuck) Grassley (R-IA) said. “A Democrat congressman last week told me after a conversation with the president that the president had trouble in the House of Representatives, and it wasn’t going to pass if there weren’t some changes made … and the president says, ‘You’re going to destroy my presidency.’ “

There’s several different ways to take this one. JWF wonders if waaaahmbulances are covered under ObamaCare. Given they’re the prefered mode of transportation for the perpetually-aggrieved, I’m sure there’s a full subsidy.

Regarding the inevitable “Two Minutes Hate” that is about to be ordered, I have to wonder who is going to be in bigger trouble for proving that it is all about Emperor Obama I – Grassley for letting that slip into the press, or the unnamed Dem Congressman who leaked it to Grassley.

As for the destruction of Obama’s Presidency, I wouldn’t be particularily bothered if health care was, as Sen. Jim DeMint said, his “Waterloo”, though the stall at the gates of Moscow is a more-accurate historical description. After all, while Waterloo was the end of Napoleon, his failure to take Moscow before General Winter and General Mud took hold was what made Waterloo possible.

Finally, we just learned which of the government-takeover plans Obama wants to happen – the Heavy plan in the House.

Impress the Press

President Obama will once again face the preprogrammed withering onslaught of questions from the compliant skeptical press this evening.  We’re being told that amongst other things, President Obama will be telling us that six months into his term, he has saved the economy.

Originally, tonight’s press conference was to be held at the White House.  However, I’ve been told that due to the importance of tonight’s message, the President has decided to change venues.  The new venue for tonight’s presser is shown here:

Mission Accomplished

Toomey within 1 of Specter, NRSC hardest hit

by @ 7:35. Filed under Politics - National.

(H/T – Jim Geraghty, who has to have earned a TRQ with this gem – “Heed my words, for dey are da chilling sounds of your Toom.”)

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports on the latest Quinnipiac poll, which has Sen. Arlen Specter (RD) barely beating presumptive Republican challenger Pat Toomey, 46%-45% 45%-44%. Worse for Specter, and the Democrats, are some of the other results:

– Specter has lost the independents, both specifically against Toomey and against Candidate X.
– Specter’s approval ratings are 47% positive, 46% negative (the highest negatives ever and the lowest positives since Specter/Toomey Round One in 2004).

Now, who insisted on backing Specter right up until his betrayal, and who insisted on trying to find a moderate-to-liberal to try to replace said turncoat moderate-to-liberal?

Revisions/extensions (7:41 am 7/22/2009) – I need caffeine because I originally posted the wrong percentages.

R&E part 2 (8:24 am 7/22/2009) – The raw numbers are now available from Quinnipiac (H/T – Allahpundit/HotAir Headlines), and they’re not encouraging for the Penn Dems:

– Specter bumped up his lead over Joe Sestak in the Dem primary from 50%-21% at the end of May to 55%-23% now.
– Toomey also whups up on Sestak, beating him 39%-35% (the end-of-May poll had Sestak up 37%-35%).
– While Specter does beat Peg Luksik, who only draws 6% to Toomey’s 47% in the Republican primary, by a 47%-40% margin, a near-majority say that he does not deserve re-election (49% no, 40% yes).
– Speaking of Luksik, she would lose to Sestak head-to-head 39%-30%.

R&E part 3 (8:57 am 7/22/2009) – Via Moe Lane, it actually looks like the NRSC finally realized the inevitable and endorsed Toomey on July 14. As someone who wanted the NRSC to stay out when it was Toomey vs. Specter in the primary, and with a very minor challenge to Toomey shaping up, I’m not entirely happy that the NRSC is in at this point, even if they’re backing a good candidate.

R&E part 4 (9:27 am 7/22/2009) – More quotable Geraghty – “Toomsday is coming.”

July 21, 2009

Hey, GOP, Are You Taking Note?, Part II

by @ 13:00. Filed under Elections, Politics - National.

Shoebox ran with a Newsmax story saying that, in terms of percentage, voter turnout went down between the 2004 and 2008 Presidential elections, the first time that has happened since 1996. I decided to try to do some analysis of the numbers the Census Bureau has been collecting since 1980, focusing on the past two elections. The numbers are, shall we say, “interesting”:

  • The number of adult citizens went up 9.1 million, from 197.0 million in 2004 to 206.1 million in 2008, a 4.5% increase.
  • The number of registered voters went up only 4.2 million from 142.1 million in 2004 (72.1% of citizens) to 146.3 million in 2008 (71.0% of citizens), a 3.0% increase. Of note, the number of registered voters as a percentage of citizens went down 2.1 percentage points.
  • The number of those who showed up to vote went up from 125.7 million in 2004 (63.8% of citizens, 88.5% of registered voters) to 131.1 million in 2008 (63.6% of citizens, 89.6% of registered voters). While that is a 0.18 percentage-point drop among citizens, that is also a 1.18 percentage-point increase among registered voters. It also is the highest registered-voter percentage since 1992.
  • In Minnesota in 2008, there were 132,000 more adults (+3.5%), 33,000 more adult citizens (+0.9%), 144,000 fewer registered voters (-4.8%), and 128,000 fewer people who showed up to vote (-4.4%).
  • In Wisconsin in 2008, there were 86,000 more adults (+2.1%), 125,000 more adult citizens (+3.2%), 130,000 fewer registered voters (-4.0%), and 123,000 fewer people who showed up to vote (-4.1%)
  • Four states (Arizona, Utah, Nevada and Georgia) had adult citizen population increases of at least 10%. Three of them (excepting Utah) also had double-digit percentage voter registration increases and double-digit percentage voter turnout increases.
  • Five states (Michigan, Maine, West Virginia, Connecticut and Louisiana) had adult citizen population decreases, with Mighican defying logic with a voter registration increase and Michgan, Connecticut and Louisana defying logic with turnout increases.
  • Five states (Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Virginia, North Carolina) plus the District of Columbia had double-digit percentage voter registration increases, with corresponding double-digit percentage turnout increases.
  • Eighteen states (Pennsylvania, Montana, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, West Virginia, Vermont, Iowa, Maine, North Dakota, Missouri, Wisconsin, Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Utah) had absolute voter registration decreases, with Louisiana and Missouri having absolute turnout increases, and a couple other states having a significantly-lower turnout decrease than registration decrease.
  • No state had a double-digit registered-voter increase as a percentage of citizens, though Virginia came closest at 7.3% (or 5.08 percentage-point increase), and 12 other states/DC (Rhode Island, Georgia, Mississippi, Connecticut, North Carolina, Louisiana, DC, Michigan, Delaware, Nevada, Maryland and Hawaii) increased their registered-voter/citizen ratio.
  • Ten states/DC (Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Virginia, Mississippi, DC, Arizona, South Carolina, Idaho and Colorado) had double-digit percentage absolute turnout increases, while 18 states (Ohio, Massachusetts, Iowa, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Montana, Oklahoma, Vermont, Maine, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Arkansas, Minnesota, Oregon, West Virginia and Utah) had absolute turnout decreases.
  • Mississippi (13.1%, 8.08 percentage points) and Georgia (13.0%, 7.40 percentage points) had the largest turnout increase as a percentage of citizens, and they were joined in the increase by North Carolina, Louisiana, Virginia, DC, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, South Carolina, Nebraska, Indiana, California, Hawaii, Tennessee, Nevada, Colorado, Delaware and Michigan.
  • Eighteen states (Wisconsin, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Wyoming, Utah, South Dakota, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Montana, Delaware, Ohio, Michigan, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Arizona and West Virginia) had turnout decreases as a percentage of registered voters.

There’s a lot more info than I can digest. I did, however, manage to get a state-by-state comparison put into an Excel spreadsheet, which also includes the total number of adults in each state, whether they are citizens, legal aliens, or illegal aliens.

The Natives are Even More Restless Than First Thought!

by @ 11:36. Filed under Global "Warming", Politics - National.

I gave you a video earlier from a town hall meeting in Delaware hosted by Republican Congressman Mike Castle.  The previous video showed him getting grilled about health care reform.  Here’s another piece from the same meeting.  This time the natives are upset about Cap and Trade. 

Listen as Castle tells the forum that the Cap and Trade bill was really too complicated for anyone to “absorb” and that he relied on what Democrat leadership told him about the bill. 

Listen as people laugh at Castle as he states that “he reads all legislation.”

Listen as Castle states that he received more calls in opposition to the bill than for it yet he still voted for the bill!

Folks, the August recess will be here in just a couple of weeks.  Many of your Congresscritters and Senators will be holding similar townhall meetings during this recess.  Make sure and attend these.  If you’re folks have been voting properly, make sure and give them positive reinforcement.  If they haven’t, take some notes from the folks in Delaware!

Finally, note to the GOP:  If you think folks are safe just because we’re so pissed off with the Democrats, think again.  We don’t care what party you belong to.  If you are stupid enough to support the government take over of America, whether it be Cap and Trade, health care, auto manufacturers or any of a number of other areas, repent now because you are just as useless to us as any Democrat!

His Arnold Schwarzenegger Moment

There’s lots of bad news today for President Obama.  Gallup’s recent polls show that by any measure, President Obama’s policies  are now being considered a failure by the American people:

  • By 49%-47%, those surveyed disapprove of how he is handling the economy, a turnaround from his 55%-42% approval in May. The steepest drop came from conservative and moderate Democrats.
  • By 50%-44%, they disapprove of how he is handling healthcare policy.
  • A 59% majority say his proposals call for too much government spending, and 52% say they call for too much expansion of government power.
  • Expectations of the economy’s turnaround are souring a bit. In February, the average prediction for a recovery was 4.1 years; now it’s 5.5 years.

Some are referring to this sudden drop and his chips all in approach to passing health care reform, as being the President’s Waterloo, the moment at which he wins no more.  I’m betting however, that with his enormous ego and narcissism, if asked, President Obama would refer to this as his Arnold Schwarzenegger moment.  If questioned about whether he might need to change his position on some of these issues I have no doubt the President would answer, “I’ll be Barack!”

Can’t or Won’t?

One of my roles with a previous employer was to develop compensation plans for various sales groups.  As I would work with the sales management it seemed that invariably they would tell me that if we paid more for a particular aspect of the plan, they would be able to get the sales team to achieve that goal.  Just as invariably, when I would hear their line, I would respond with a question, “Is the problem that you can’t do it unless you get paid more or is the problem that you won’t do it unless you get paid more?”  I think you can see the dilemma this left the sales management folks in.

As he cranks up his rhetoric in an attempt to save his health care reform initiative, President Obama told us today that we need to pass health care because it’s the only way to reduce costs.  His exact quote was:

We all know there are more efficient ways of doing it..

implying that only with the passage of health care reform would costs be reduced.  Ironically, he said this on the same day that it was found that the Agriculture department had paid nearly double the going rate for plain old ham.

It’s interesting that when President Obama refers to cost savings in health care he is referring to cost savings in Medicare and Medicaid.  As the health care debate got started, President Obama identified three areas where money could be saved: blackmailing drug companies via FDA approvals, to reduce drug prices, ration treatment to patients by forcing “increased productivity” of physicians and not paying for run of the mill issues that are treated in emergency rooms.   By doing just these three things, President Obama claims that $313 billion could be saved!

Medicare and Medicaid are programs that are completely administered by the government.  Rates for physicians are dictated by the government, procedures and drugs covered are dictated by the government.  With complete control over these programs wouldn’t it seem to be simple for President Obama to save his $313 billion simply by saying “make it so?”  In fact, the exact changes that President Obama proposes are changes that these programs have implemented to varying degrees in the past.

Continuing to cry that only the nationalization of our health care is the only way to reduce costs leaves me asking just one question of President Obama; are you telling me that without taking more of my money you can’t or won’t save money in health care?

Hey, GOP, Are You Taking Note?

Census: Voter Turnout in 2008 Lowest in 12 8 Years

For all the attention generated by Barack Obama’s candidacy, the share of eligible voters who actually cast ballots in November declined for the first time in a dozen years. The reason: Older whites with little interest in backing either Barack Obama or John McCain stayed home.

The decline in percentage turnout was the first in a presidential election since 1996. At that time, voter participation fell to 58.4 percent — the lowest in decades — as Democrat Bill Clinton won an easy re-election over Republican Bob Dole amid a strong economy.

Class, what did we learn?

1.  Give us “the next guy in line” again and we’ll sit out again!

2.  Give us someone who looks no different than a Democrat on many issues and we’ll sit out again

Oh and:

Minnesota and the District of Columbia had the highest turnout, each with 75 percent.

3.  If you have a crappy GOP candidate, even if we don’t sit out we won’t vote for them.

Revisions/extensions (8:12 am 7/21/2009; steveegg) – Newsmax didn’t exactly fact-check the numbers, which caused the error struck through above. According to the Census Bureau, the 2000 turnout percentage was lower than 2008’s. It still is, however, the first drop in voter turnout percentage since 1996.

Related to that, I’m sifting through the Census Bureau’s turnout numbers going back to 1980.

July 20, 2009

The Natives are Getting Restless

by @ 16:24. Filed under Politics - National.

Falling personal approval ratings, falling support ratings for major initiatives, falling confidence for the party he leads all should give President Obama some pause when considering whether he is representing the interests of the American people.

The attached clip seems pretty representative not necessarily of the issue but of the passion and concern, that generating amongst many folks of all political persuasions, that I talk to.  While only one incident, this did occur in Delaware.  Last I looked Delaware wasn’t close to being a Red State.

July 17, 2009

Slim, None and Nil

by @ 21:17. Filed under Politics - National.

Between joining the climate change bandwagon with Nancy Pelosi

And now, positing that Sotomayor may be a moderate:

“The person who has testified this week is dramatically more moderate than the person who made those speeches,” he said before delivering a speech at the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council. “It will be very interesting to see how she winds up as a justice.”

Newt Gingrich has lost all credibility with me as understanding any part of the Democrat’s modus operandi. 

Is Newt really so out of touch that he doesn’t understand that liberals like Obama and Sotomayor have no compunction about saying anything necessary to get themselves elevated to the role they seek?  Does Newt not understand that “I didn’t say that,” “I didn’t know” and “I’m sorry if anyone felt offended” are standard phrases that have been accepted by the left as absolving all members of any responsibility, at least momentarily, of anything that they had done or said in the past?

Newt, to be clear, the likelihood of Sotomayor being moderate is the same likelihood that man is responsible for climate change.  In case you can’t do the math, it is zero!

If We Don’t Learn From History…

by @ 16:12. Filed under Economy, Politics - National.

We are doomed to repeat it…

From the 1934 Chicago Tribune. The Names have changed, the issues haven’t!
Cartoon

The Friday Freefly is back

by @ 6:55. Filed under Politics - National.

There’s no Kev with the change of venue to DC, but Uncle Jimbo launches into a douchebag of an Army major, a linguini-armed CinC who is a baseball poseur, and various Socialist hits. For those of you with weak ears, you may not want to play the video because of more than a few vulgarities. The rest of you – enjoy!

[youtube width=”560″ height=”340″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lduW_u7qlcw[/youtube]

I Agree With Joe Biden!

For those who have read this blog for a while, I’ll give you a moment to put your teeth back in and pick yourself up off of the floor.

Ready?

In a speech to AARP about the proposed national health care plan, Joe Biden said:

“And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.”

For once, I absolutely agree with Joe.  The current course is unsustainable.  We need to make changes soon or we’re going to be in a whole heap of trouble!

Think I’m just some two bit blogging hack who’s just throwing another opinion to the ether?  Don’t think my opinions is that valuable?  Well, don’t trust me then, trust the head of the Congressional Budget Office. 

In his testimony to Congress and in his blog, the Director of the CBO said:

the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. Although great uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, rising costs for health care and the aging of the population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly under any plausible scenario for current law. (emphasis mine)

That’s right, shocking isn’t it.  The federal budget is on an unsustainable path.  The CBO goes on to explain what the problem with the budget is….take one guess at what is causing the unsustainable problem:

Measured relative to GDP, almost all of the projected growth in federal spending other than interest payments on the debt stems from the three largest entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. For decades, spending on Medicare and Medicaid has been growing faster than the economy. CBO projects that if current laws do not change, federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid combined will grow from roughly 5 percent of GDP today to almost 10 percent by 2035. By 2080, the government would be spending almost as much, as a share of the economy, on just its two major health care programs as it has spent on all of its programs and services in recent years.

And this is before putting another $1.5 Trillion minimum of additional costs into the budget for the national health care program!

Later in his speech, Joe went on to lie again telling the folks that they would be able to keep their existing health plan if they wanted:

They’ll be a deal in there so there’s competition, so what you’ll have in there is you’ll have the ability to go in there and say, ‘Now look, this is the policy I want. This is the one,” Biden said.

Someone should get Joe a copy of the House bill or a subscription to Investors Business Daily.  If he had either, he would note the following:

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

Joe did have one last comment that I agree with him on:

“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.

Yes, Joe.  If we continue down this path and are lucky, we may only go bankrupt as a nation.  My bet is that if we follow the advice of you and yours, we’ll commit national suicide!

July 16, 2009

Soon, at a Medical Provider Near You!

Massachusetts is the state whose health care model that is being used for much of the Democrat’s plan.  When Massachusetts plan was proposed, it was supposed to cost the State a few hundred thousand dollars each year.  It is now costing more than twice what it was proposed to cost.

From the NY Times:

BOSTON — A hospital that serves thousands of indigent Massachusetts residents sued the state on Wednesday, charging that its costly universal health care law is forcing the hospital to cover too much of the expense of caring for the poor.

The central charge in the suit is that the state has siphoned money away from Boston Medical to help pay the considerable cost of insuring all but a small percentage of residents. Three years after the law’s passage, Massachusetts has the country’s lowest percentage of uninsured residents: 2.6 percent, compared with a national average of 15 percent.

Sound Familiar?

One of the state’s reimbursement rates to Boston Medical, dropped from $12, 476 in 2008 to $9,323 by 2009, the suit says.

Folks, this is one way that government rations.  By reducing their payments to providers, for no reason other than they can, providers begin reducing the number of patients they will see or reduce the care the patients get.  Is it lost on the D.C. crowd how many providers no longer accept Medicaid patients?

State officials have suggested that Boston Medical could reduce costs by operating more efficiently. The state has also pointed out that the hospital has reserves of about $190 million, but Tom Traylor, the hospital’s vice president of federal and state programs, said the reserves could only sustain the hospital for about a year.

Translation:  You have money, therefore you can afford to get paid less or pay more to be a part of the program.

If the State is so good at identifying where cost reductions can be attained, why is it that they have a budget shortfall of $5 Billion?  Can’t they state turn their own folks inward to find the waste and inefficiency in the State’s budget?

Deja Vu All Over Again

by @ 5:34. Filed under Economy, Health, Politics - National.

President Obama along with many Democrats, are trying to push a health care overhaul before the August recess. Amidst arguments of the cost ($1.6 Trillion to over $4 trillion), how to pay for it (taxes, taxes, taxes) and who it would provide political payback for (planned parenthood amongst others), most folks, including those in Congress, have no idea how this plan (at 3,000 pages) would actually work.  To help show the complexity of what is being proposed the Republicans have released a chart that shows all of the bureaucratic snarling that would occur if the proposed plan is passed.  Can you make sense of it?

Dem med

It’s hard to believe that this mess can possibly provide better health care than what we have today. The funny thing is that I seem to remember seeing a similar plan to this as a kid. As a kid I remember seeing a plan that had fewer bureaucratic involvement yet had the same exact end result.

While almost 40 years old, I believe this chart would have just as much success as the one the Democrats are proposing:

Mouse_Trap_Board_and_Boxjpg

Either way, we end up trapped at the end!

July 15, 2009

Reagan-era whiz-kid says the tax war is lost

by @ 10:03. Filed under Politics - National, Taxes.

Peter Ferrara, who served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, had an intriguing piece that appeared in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. In it, he tries to make the case that the NewConservative™ position on taxes should be not that everybody should have a low tax bill, but that the bottom 60% of wage-earners should have an explicit 0% federal tax rate with an end to refundable tax credits. He argues that we’re already at the point where said bottom 60%, which earns 25% of the total income, paid less than 1% of total federal taxes in 2006 (the last year figures were available), and will likely have a net 0% federal tax liability come April, 2010. He further argues that the reason that Steve Lonegan lost the Republican gubernatorial primary in very-high-tax New Jersey was because he advocated a flat 3% income tax, which would have raised taxes slightly on the bottom half of wage-earners.

K Street, we have a disconnect. If it is true that Lonegan lost because of the tax issue, then that plan is doomed to failure. Ferrara notes that, in 2006, the bottom 40% of wage-earners received an aggregate net 3.6% of their income in refundable tax credits. If that gets taken away, there goes an aggretate 3.5% (no, not 3.6%) of their income.

What is worse is Ferrara’s leaps-of-faith regarding the 40% of those who will now be explicitly hitched to the bloat known as the federal government and its effect on the size of said bloat. He seems to think that, by explicitly taking the majority out of the tax burden entirely, a rational, low-tax policy can be put in place for the “rich”, with the phantom “middle-class tax cut” taken out of political play. What is more likely is that both halves of the bipartisan Party-In-Government will redouble (and in the case of the GOP, retriple) their efforts to buy Paul’s vote by robbing Peter to grow government since there would be far more Pauls than Peters.

The one part of his analysis that is correct is that the Peters would find ways to go Galt. Now, what was that saying about the great experiment in governance known as America ending when half the people realize that they can use the power of government to rob the other half blind?

July 14, 2009

Let’s Call It “Employment Change”

by @ 13:53. Filed under Economy, Politics - National.

It always seems that liberals use words or phrases until the words don’t support their view of the world any longer.  When that happens liberals typically change the definition of the words or come up with description changes that fit their new view of the situation.

Do you remember how “Climate Change” used to be called “Global Warming?”  Yeah, global warming up until it became clear that all the claims being made about increasing global temperatures….made by man….we’re blown up by nearly 10 straight years of global temperature flattening or even cooling.  Voila, “Global Warming” was changed to “Climate Change.”  It really didn’t matter that the world wasn’t warming any more, the fact that something is changing that is not in line with the liberals desire is what the true catastrophic issue is.

When President Obama proposed the Stimulus plan he had his economic experts sell the plan by saying that without it, unemployment would go to nearly 10%.  In contrast, by implementing the stimulus plan, Obama argued that unemployment would cap at 8%.

Over the past weekend President Obama told us that the stimulus plan was working swimmingly and that while unemployment was a “lagging indicator”, all would be well if we were just patient:

“We’re moving in the right direction,” Obama said. “We must let it work the way it’s supposed to, with the understanding that in any recession, unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity.”

While in Michigan today, President Obama said that he really doesn’t have a clue what is happening with unemployment:

“How employment numbers are going to respond is not year clear. My expectation is that we will probably continue to see unemployment tick up for several months.”

Clearly, this is what Obama and his team expected to see.  Clearly they had expected that by doing the man made adjustments all would become right with unemployment.  Clearly they are now frustrated that things are not going along the path they prescribed in February.  What should they do now?  I know, let’s not call it “unemployment” anymore, let’s call it “employment change.”  There, they were never wrong.  Problem solved!

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